April 8, 2009

Dead wood

The Ecologist magazine is to axe its print edition after 39 years and relaunch online, according to The Guardian.

The PR blether that accompanies the closure includes this bit of guff from Zac Goldsmith. He says that the title will now be able to “react faster to what is now a global and daily debate on how best to preserve the world in which we all live”.

This speed of reaction is, of course, perfectly possible online without necessitating ending the print magazine, so perhaps the real reasons for the closure lie more in the fact that the title doesn’t sell many copies. The Guardian report picks up The Ecologist line that it sells “20,000 copies a month”. Yeah, right.